We have been so fortunate to have been able to share our lives for the past 8 years with a monstrous old tree in our backyard. It was a Norway Maple either planted or left to grow on the fence line by people over 150 years ago and it was incredible. These typically shrubby and mildly invasive trees usually start to break apart at a much younger age but for whatever reason, this one flourished and grew to be simply enormous. Its hollowing limbs were condominium for squirrels and each morning there was always at least one woodpecker hunting for insects on the dead wood which the tree was constantly shedding. We enjoyed and appreciated its wide circle of shade through the hot days of summer and warmed ourselves by campfires under its canopy on fall nights. The tree's abundant crop of leaves which it deposited each year served as entertainment for our children and as fertilizer for our gardens. What a joy it was to have that tree in our lives all those years.
This past summer, a huge gust of wind broke of one of the major limbs of the tree. It was being overtaken by fungus and much of the wood was hollow and rotten. Then a month or two later, another third of the tree crashed to the ground, taking out a river birch in the neighbor's yard along with it. It became extremely important to have the remaining piece of the tree taken down for the safety of everyone who worked/played in the area around it. I felt so much sadness surrounding the loss of that beautiful tree and needed to look for the bright side in the situation. Surprisingly, it wasn't very difficult to find the many benefits we would be able to take advantage of!
I was shocked to learn that when arborists take down trees, most people wish to have every last trace of the tree removed from the property. It is like they want to erase all memory of the tree's existence. Not only was I unaware of this, I also learned it is very expensive to have that done! When we said we wanted to keep the wood from the tree, there were hundreds of dollars taken off of our bill! The small branches were ground into mulch. It was admittedly and enormous pile of mulch from a tree so large, but a permaculturist can never really have too much mulch... so it never concerned me at all. The logs are a little trickier. When you take an entire tree's worth of wood and make a pile out of it, the volume it takes up is fairly similar to the volume of the tree when it was alive. It is honestly a very big pile of logs for a suburban backyard! Nonetheless, we are super stoked about the many uses we have come up with!
One obvious use for logs is firewood. There is waaaayyy more firewood than we could burn in any reasonable amount of time with an outdoor firepit, but we plan to see about having a wood stove installed in the old fireplace of our house. It may turn out that we can use the wood as a more sustainable form of heating for a winter or two! Another great idea we have had is to use the smaller logs for a hügelkultur bed. If you don't know what this is, you may want to look it up, but basically it is a garden bed made of many layers of organic materials that are formed into a mound. The base layer is made of logs (which we have plenty of)! More ideas include using the larger rounds as seating around the firepit, using the smaller ones as borders on garden beds or even selling split wood as a source of income!
In the end, we have all had an intimate encounter with the cycle of life. The death of this great-grandfather tree has opened up so many opportunities for life. It's trunk, branches, and roots will become the food for the ecosystems we are building in our yard and these ecosystems will sustain not only us humans but countless other living creatures that call our gardens home. Even the bright sunlight shining down on the ground around the stump is an invitation for new life, new gardens and perhaps new trees that will spend the next 150 years stretching their branches towards the sky.